victoriousvocabulary:

SHAKTI

[noun]

(Devanagari: शक्ति; from Sanskrit shak, “to be able”) meaning sacred force or empowerment - the primordial cosmic energy and represents the dynamic forces which are thought to move through the entire universe in Hinduism. Shakti is the concept, or personification, of divine feminine creative power, sometimes referred to as ‘The Great Divine Mother’ in Hinduism. On the earthly plane, Shakti most actively manifests through female embodiment and creativity/fertility, though it is also present in males in its potential, unmanifest form.

Not only is the Shakti responsible for creation, it is also the agent of all change. Shakti is cosmic existence as well as liberation, its most significant form being the Kundalini Shakti, a mysterious psychospiritual force. It exists in a state of svātantrya, dependence on no-one, being interdependent with the entire universe.

In Shaktism, Shakti is worshipped as the Supreme Being. However, in other Hindu traditions of Shaivism and Vaishnavism, Shakti embodies the active feminine energy Prakriti of Purusha, who is Vishnu in Vaishnavism or Shiva in Shaivism. Vishnu’s female counterpart is called Lakshmi, with Parvati being the female half of Shiva.

victoriousvocabulary:

INVIGORATE

[verb]

to give vigour to; fill with life and energy; energise.

victoriousvocabulary:

HIPPOCAMPUS [aka HIPPOCAMP]

[noun]

1. the genus for seahorses. “Hippocampus” comes from the Ancient Greek hippos meaning “horse” and kampos meaning “sea monster”. Seahorses are mainly found in shallow tropical and temperate waters throughout the world, and prefer to live in sheltered areas such as seagrass beds, estuaries, coral reefs, or mangroves.

2. a mythological creature shared by Phoenician and Greek mythology, though the name by which it is recognised is purely Greek; it became part of Etruscan mythology. It has typically been depicted as a horse in its forepart with a coiling, scaly, fishlike hindquarter.

3. a major component of the brains of humans and other vertebrates. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation.

[Susan Seddon-Boulet]

NB: featured again so quickly due to popular request. Click here for previous entry.

victoriousvocabulary:

DENDROPSYCHE

[noun]

the soul of a tree; the soul within a tree.